


Little Girl

by marycontraire



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 08:19:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10963344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/pseuds/marycontraire
Summary: “You’re not a little girl anymore.”She whirls around to face him, raising Needle’s point to his chest.  He’s sitting on the half-wall at the edge of the practice yard, nonchalantly eating a heel of brown bread, and he doesn’t even flinch at her threat.“What do you mean by that?” Arya demands angrily.





	Little Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read either as future fic (near in the future fic), or wishful-thinking speculation for season seven or eight. I don't think it contains actual spoilers for season seven beyond the obvious return of one of the two characters I've tagged. I did have in mind HBO's version of Gendry, but it's non-specific enough that it completely works for the book version as well. This little idea was very rapidly conceived and executed, so it wasn't even beta-read. Feel free to point out my inevitable typos and grammatical errors in comments, as I'd like to go back and fix them.

“You’re not a little girl anymore.” 

She’s lost in her morning water dancing exercises with Needle when she hears him say it. She didn’t notice him come into the yard in the pre-dawn half-light, but there’s no mistaking that clipped Fleabottom accent. He doesn’t even say the T’s in “little,” just casually swallows them, as ever he did. At least his bloody _voice_ hasn’t changed like the rest of him.

He’s not the first to say this to her since her return to Winterfell. Sansa, who has infuriatingly taken on all of their late mother’s power and responsibility but none of her warmth, says it thrice daily, it seems -- when Arya refuses to dress in gowns, when she scales the damaged walls of Winterfell, when she calls the young Lord Baratheon a “stupid, bullheaded bastard,” and punches him hard in the chest. 

As if Gendry even _feels_ a blow to the chest -- he’s become even more huge than he was when she knew him all those years ago, the great, stubborn oaf. 

Even Jon, once her most stalwart ally, employed the phrase against her the other day at her outraged reaction to a comment he made about her future marriage. Arya is fairly certain his remark was casual and not indicative of any firm plans -- he’s a bit preoccupied planning war on the Others at the moment -- but it hasn’t escaped her notice that he was quick to marry that Manderly girl off to his wildling commander friend when he felt it politically advantageous. Jon is the King in the North now; if they all survive the coming Night, he’ll eventually grow some ambitions about alliances her hand could forge.

Arya swipes her sword viciously in a practiced circle. If _that’s_ what Gendry wants to speak to her about, she’ll clobber his stupid bull head with Needle’s hilt right now.

She whirls around to face him, raising Needle’s point to his chest. He’s sitting on the half-wall at the edge of the practice yard, nonchalantly eating a heel of brown bread, and he doesn’t even flinch at her threat.

“What do you mean by that?” Arya demands angrily.

Gendry shrugs. “You’ve outgrown Needle.”

This is perhaps the very last answer Arya was expecting. 

“I know water dancing relies on a light blade,” Gendry says, “but you need something longer, now. And, anyway, that isn’t even a proper Braavosi sword. The blade should be wider where it meets the hilt and taper gradually towards the point, and it should have a central ridge and a curved cross guard.”

Arya feels a delighted grin twist its way onto her face, and for a moment she _does_ feel like a little girl again, like the little girl who knew Gendry all those years ago in the war-torn Riverlands. “You’ve forged Braavosi swords before?” She says incredulously.

“Of course,” Gendry says around the last mouthful of his bread. “Plenty of Braavosis in King’s Landing, and they take their swords seriously. They don’t waste their time haggling over prices with incompetent armorers, like _some_ idiots.”

Arya snorts -- she knows who Gendry’s swinging at with that remark.

“There was one man in particular who used to bring Master Mott a good deal of business. He was swordmaster, actually, and he used to do lessons, so we wound up forging for his pupils when they were ready. Forel, I think his name was.”

For a moment, Arya is speechless. Her voice sounds a bit hoarse to her own ears when, at last, she says, “Syrio Forel. He was my dancing master.”

“Really?” Gendry says, surprised. “Well, if the Seven Kingdoms hadn’t gone to shit, I might have wound up forging you a sword.”

“Is that what you’re offering to do now?” Arya says.

Gendry grins conspiratorially. “Truth be told, I’ve been itching to get into that forge. When your sister put the Bolton men to death, she didn’t spare the smiths. They’ve got a handful of green apprentice boys in there now, alright for forging horseshoes and hinges, but, well, let’s just say that Winterfell’s armory has certainly seen better days.”

Arya snorts derisively. “Sansa’s an idiot,” she says. “How did she think she was going to rebuild a castle and outfit an army with no master smiths?”

Gendry shrugs. “I don’t think most highborns think too hard about the value of lowborn tradesmen, m’lady.”

 _“We_ do,” Arya says pointedly.

“Yes,” Gendry agrees. “We do. But we’re different, aren’t we?”

Arya nods, suddenly finding it difficult to meet the gaze of his sky-blue eyes. _Baratheon blue,_ everyone’s been saying since he arrived at the gates of Winterfell with a war hammer strapped to his back and the bannermen of the Stormlands following after. The lords of Jon’s Army of the Living have compared every inch of Gendry to his father -- his eyes, his hair, his size and strength, his temper, his stubbornness, that stupid fucking hammer he forged for himself. She even heard some old lord making a comment about Gendry being “as gone on that wild little Stark girl as Robert was on Lyanna.” She’d have given him a piece of her mind, too, but at the time she was using her servant-girl face to spy, and it wouldn’t have done to draw attention to herself.

Only Arya knows that Gendry is nothing like that foolish king. Gendry can be bullheaded and hot-tempered at times, sure, but he wouldn’t have survived this long -- wouldn’t have kept _her_ alive -- if he didn’t have twice the sense in his little finger that Robert had in his whole fat head. A sudden longing for her old Gendry pierces her, even as she glances back up at this Gendry, dressed in the leathers and furs of a proper Westerosi lord. It will be good to see him in the forge again, even if only for a day.

“Do you have the steel for it?” she says.

“There’s plenty of steel about,” Gendry says. “It’s the quality I’m worried about. Can’t forge a Braavosi blade with inferior metal. I’ll have to do a bit of digging, see what I can come up with.” 

Decisively, Arya reaches out and hands him Needle by the hilt. “How’s this for quality?”

Gendry takes the blade and balances it in his hand, testing the weight and running his finger along the edge. After a few minutes of turning it over, he hands it back. 

“It’s excellent,” he says. “But are you sure you want to part with it? It means the world to you. Or, it did. When you were little.”

Arya raises Needle’s blade before her face and studies it carefully. Gendry’s right: Needle had meant the world to her, all those years she was separated from her home and family. Now, she has her home and family. Jon and Sansa and even Winterfell are much changed, but then so is she. And despite her siblings’ constant reminders of her age and position, Gendry, she thinks, is the only one who truly sees it.

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Gendry,” she says, and she hands him back the sword. This time, she has no trouble meeting his eyes.

“No,” Gendry agrees. “You’re not.”


End file.
